How do we merge personal spiritual disciplines with being the hands and feet of God? How do we move from justification (the moment when we quit fighting God and surrender ourselves to our Creator, Redeemer and Guide) to embrace the process of sanctification (letting that moment propel us forward into a relationship built for growing and serving).

I think of this quote from N T Wright: "Worship is love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved." And I believe these concepts are intertwined and explored in Christ's words often called "the Sermon on the Mount."

The first thing to consider is to understand to whom Jesus was speaking. Jesus had gone "up into a mountain and when he was set, his disciples came to Him." So He was not writing this to seekers who were still exploring Jesus teachings. This was not addressed to new believers. It was not addressed to the adversarial church leaders who challenged Jesus daily. This is Jesus instructing, teaching and loving His established followers. Today we might say He was speaking to people who identified themselves as his followers and who were seeking to be "disciplined".

This term discipline has developed such a negative aura that the way it is used for Christians is considered by the Merriam-Webster dictionary people to be "obsolete," though for loving parents it is not obsolete at all. We long to discipline or instruct our children in ways that help them become productive citizens of their political community, their family community and their church community. Discipline has only lately come to mean so broadly meant something harsh or artificially restrictive.

But these folks were looking to Jesus to help them form a way of understanding in a more orderly and mature fashion this very question of growing in grace, becoming more mature followers, of being sanctified throughout the time between accepting salvation moving on to the post death part of the journey, of learning how to live our days here in faith.

We all have such different stories of faith, and if we are very fortunate indeed, that story gets new chapters written throughout our time here. In the coming days let's consider how that might happen.